Ken Borland

Last September when the Bulls left Pretoria, their families and home comforts, and their support structures to head for Dublin and take on European powerhouses Leinster in their opening United Rugby Championship match it was with trepidation as they stepped into a daunting unknown.

Now when they head once more to the Irish capital for their semi-final against the same team on Friday night, they know more about the challenges they face but also about themselves and how much they have grown in the last eight-and-a-half months.

Coach Jake White said whether or not his underdogs manage to beat the tournament favourites, the game will be a valuable measurement of just how far the team have come and how much further they still have to go.

“We will see how good we are on Friday night, whether we have grown or not,” White said after their thrilling quarterfinal win over the Sharks. “I like to think that we are a better side.

“But it’s a chance to measure ourselves against an international-strength side, a team that has dominated Europe. You want to end a tournament playing your best rugby.

“Leinster were in rampant form in their quarterfinal after their Champions Cup disappointment last week. Friday night is a chance for the players to measure themselves against international players.

“This group has only been together for two years and we had two 19-year-olds in our 23-man squad. They are playing beyond their ages and their time together as a group,” White said.

Leinster stated their determination to win the inaugural URC, having won the last four editions of the Pro14 that preceded it, with chilling efficiency at the weekend as they destroyed Glasgow Warriors 76-14.

They will go into Friday night’s semi-final with confidence at a high, physically fresh and with home advantage. The Bulls will arrive in Dublin with a short week and bodies still battered from their gruelling tussle with the Sharks and the short turnaround thereafter.

In terms of experience, Leinster will go into the game with a massive advantage in terms of Test caps.

And White has stressed the most important part of their challenge on Friday night will be to start well, to not allow Leinster to play with the amount of possession they gifted the Sharks in the opening 10 minutes.

“Leinster’s front row probably has more international caps than our entire team, but the one thing I did see in La Rochelle’s Champions Cup final win was that you’ve got to hold them in the first half,” White said.

“You’ve got to keep them to a reasonable score at halftime. Leinster score the most points of all URC teams in the first 20 minutes of games. But in that final they took one or two bad options.

“So they are beatable but we have to not let them start well. You cannot play catch-up against a very good team like that, and if we give Leinster the ball for the first 10 minutes then they will not miss out on those opportunities,” White said.

Nollis Marais and Pine Pienaar are old friends who have been up and down the Bulls’ coaching structures ever since they arrived at Loftus Versfeld in 2011, but now they have been reunited on the SuperRugby coaching team as director of rugby Jake White announced his overhaul of the senior staff on Wednesday.

Marais was the Bulls’ head coach in 2016-17, a period marked by poor results and an even worse working relationship with high performance manager Xander Janse van Rensburg, who has subsequently been investigated for fraud and corruption. Marais was demoted when John Mitchell arrived at Loftus, but White has now elevated the man with probably the best junior rugby record in the country to the new position of dedicated breakdown specialist for the Bulls SuperRugby team and all sides representing the union.

Pienaar has been the Bulls’ defence coach but has now been shifted to the role of technical advisor, with Joey Mongalo, a former Bulls Currie Cup player, taking up the defence role he fulfilled at the Lions under both Johan Ackermann and Swys de Bruin.

“Teams have always had consultants or forwards coaches addressing the breakdown as part of their broader roles. This will become a key focus area for us going forward, especially with the breakdown laws being changed.

“It also speaks to the type of rugby we will be looking to play. Nollis has been around the block and knows exactly what we need. I have no doubt that he is the perfect man for this job,” White said in a statement released by the Bulls on Wednesday.

White had previously announced the appointment of Russell Winter, formerly with the Lions and Stormers as the forwards coach, and former Springbok flyhalf Chris Rossouw will continue as backline coach.

The Bulls have released Daan Human, who helped turn Lizo Gqoboka and Trevor Nyakane into one of the best propping pairs in SuperRugby last year, to the Springboks and White said a new scrum coach would be announced “in the near future”.

CJ van der Linde, who played 75 Tests for South Africa and was a member of White’s 2007 World Cup winning Springbok squad, and subsequently coached with him at Montpellier, is favoured to replace Human.

In the last week the Bulls have also boosted their playing resources by confirming the return of Springbok wing Travis Ismaiel and the signing of talented youngsters in former Western Province hooker Schalk Erasmus and Walt Steenkamp, a 2.03m, 121kg lock who has played for both the North-West Leopards and the Free State Cheetahs.